Anyone who has given their child an unusual name ...

[golfgal]

My dd is a Josephine and we call her Josie. Both of my girls have very classic, old-fashioned names. Makes sense as both were named after their grandparents.

I never met anyone with my name growing up. Now, I hear it all the time -- mostly in the 6 and under crowd. I never thought my name would be back in fashion. Who knows, maybe my dds' names will be, too.

My Grandma's name was Eva.

I have to agree with this- I can't imagine the torture that the poor child will endure throughout school being named after a fish....not only from the girls but from the boys--she will be the butt of many jokes.

I have to agree with this. I am sure a lot of parents think their names are unique and clever but the poor child has to live with this for the rest of their life. Why do that to a child? At least use it for a middle name if you like it so much???

We have a niece and 2 nephews with really unique names. When they were born they sent the birth announcements with phonetic spellings (under the real spelling) of the kids name. Having to do that is a pretty good indication that the kid is going to have to be correcting people through their entire life and maybe you should rethink your choice of name.

 

[teskak]

I have a complicated Polish last name, so we picked a nice easy name for DD5's first name, but after a friend suggested I name her after a strong woman, picked Eowyn as her middle name.

If you recognise its origins great, if not it is good to be described as Welsh. If when she is a teenager she decides to be 'different' then the name is already there.

 

[torinsmom]

My son is named Torin and he loves his name. We have only met 2 other Torin's in his life. I also gave him a common middle name (Scott) in case he didn't like having a unique name.

Marsha

 

[Sgt Mickey]

My dd is Reece. Not uncommon but uncommon for a girl. Everyone spells it with an S which is annoying. I have 3 boys who all have common names. BUT two have sort if unusal middle names. One is Sage which I guess isn't all that uncommom here and Jagger.

 

[mickeyboat]

I have an unusual first name (Denae). I hated it when I was growing up, and named DDs with common names (Hannah and Emily).

I think it is a lot more acceptable these days for kids to have unusual names or unusual spellings of names, so there is not the same stigma attached to it as there was when I was growing up.

 

[kellimomo3]

My husband was doing business at an office complex in a nearby city and a woman had just had a baby she named "Placenta". There is NO NAME crueler than that!

 

[NHdisneylover]

I have an unusual name and I hate it. I swore I would never do that to my children. Their names aren't Emily and Jason but they aren't the only ones in a 1000 mile radius with their name like I am.

Its funny when I see kids who have ususual names, most of the parents have what is called "normal" names.

Just think how you would feel with the name you are giving your child. For some its OK. But as far as I'm concerned , I would have loved Emily as my name.

I bet there's some kind of trend...

Common name will choose an uncommon name that will choose common name, and so on...

I don't fall into tht trend at all. I have ALWAYS loved my unusual name--Hadley. I get annoyed by people who insist on pronouncing it as if it had three syllables and rhymed with Natalie, but they are few and far between (the worst culprit was my third grade teacher). BECAUSE I love my unusual name so much, and because DH (David) disliked alwasy being one of 3 or more boys in the room with the same name I picked unique names for my kids as well.
DD is Marika
DS is Rio

So far both really like their names I gave them both "normal" middle names so they can go by those if they ever do not like the different names and they both know that is why. Both of them think that is funny and can't imagine not liking their own names (DD12 likes to go by the two together though--Marika Rose).

My new daughter is named Josie (not Josephine) - not a common name, but certainly not unusual. I haven't met another Josie younger than 65 though.
I wanted to name her Emaline, Amelie, or Beatrice, all of which my DH vetoed as too unusual.

My 9 year old niece is Josie. She has another Josie in her class and there are two more in her 7 year old sister's class.

i have a common name with an uncommon spelling, and it does not lend itself to ANY variation or nickname-I HATE IT (and i hated as a kid that nothing preprinted had my name spelled the way i did on it). as a result i chose a name for dd that while not terribly common is familiar, and it lends itself to at least 1/2 dozen variations or nicknames.

dh has a VERY common first name-and only 3 variations, two of which he detests. as a result our son was not named for him (though dh relented and let me give him his name as a middle name), but given a name for which there is only 1 variation/nickname and it still sounds almost identical to his given name.


btw-those of you that believe you've given your child an unusual name would be wildly surpised to see how they stacked up against some of the names i encountered handling thousands of birth certificates

Again I am the opposite. Hadley does not lend itself to nicknames and I am glad of it. I made a point of picking names that could not be easily altered. My dad (Robert) always got so frustrated when people just assumed he was okay with being called Robby or Bob or Rob, etc.

 

[NikitaZee]

My dd is Reece. Not uncommon but uncommon for a girl. Everyone spells it with an S which is annoying. I have 3 boys who all have common names. BUT two have sort if unusal middle names. One is Sage which I guess isn't all that uncommom here and Jagger.

That's interesting to me - his was originally picked out as a middle name but I liked it so much we went with it as his first name. We had complaints from the family, but now that's just his name and everyone loves it because it's him!

 

[vettechick99]

I like unusual names. I have a Scooner Tuna.

 

[punkin]

My girls are named after their great-grandmother and grandmother respectively, so they are not weird and made up names, but they are highly unusual. Both are the only girls with their names they have ever met (they have met older people, but that's unusual too).

I like the names despite horrendous misspellings, mispronunciations and one know-it-all first grade teacher who actually told my DD she was spelling her name wrong!

 

[puffkin]

Angela, I hope you know that I adore you from when you posted regularily on this board years ago, and this is not meant in a mean way:

Remy and Holland are lovely names, and while not necessarily common, not what I would call unusual.

Koi, on the other hand, goes way beyond unusual. Seriously, naming your child after a fish? Have you really thought this through? Kids are mean, teenage girls can be horrible. I can think of a dozen awful jokes the poor girl will undoubtedly endure as a teenager. She will not thank you for this.

I am so glad you are back posting Angela and I agree that Remy and Holland are great names (Actually I never saw Remy before you and then the movie, but I love it). But I agree with everyone else, Koi just isn't a good idea. If you love it so much, definitely would make a good middle name, but I think it is an awful first name. And I say that in the nicest way possible

I'm preggers now with our fourth. If its a boy, it will be Jacoby Gavin. We've had this name picked out for years but never been able to use it. If its a girl, .... I have no idea what we'll name her! I want to get away from the J names, there aren't any more that I like, but DH insists on the J's! (His dad is named James, and we don't have any boys, so its kind of like paying homage to his dad.

Love the name Jacoby!!!! Jacoby (boy) and Lexi (girl) are our names if/when we go for baby #2!

My new daughter is named Josie (not Josephine) - not a common name, but certainly not unusual. I haven't met another Josie younger than 65 though.
I wanted to name her Emaline, Amelie, or Beatrice, all of which my DH vetoed as too unusual.

I know of at least 5 Josie's in the under 5 set around hear (3 in sons daycare and 2 coworkers kids/grandkids). I think all of them are Josephine's except for one who is a Jocelyn.

My dd Piper, is still pretty young (8), but she loves her name, and we get lots of compliments on it. I don't know how unusual it is, I would say middle of the road unusual? She's never met anyone else with it, though we have seen other people with the same name...one here on the boards that's an adult, and occasionally in a newspaper or something. My ex and I both have pretty common names, so we wanted something different for her. Definitely beats being in a grocery, hearing your name, and turning to realize it's some Mom calling her kid..lol.

I know a Piper too! Cute name and it fits her so well. Definitely falls into the category of unusual but not weird to me!

 

[barkley]

My husband was doing business at an office complex in a nearby city and a woman had just had a baby she named "Placenta". There is NO NAME crueler than that!

i think naming a boy 'my precious' comes pretty close ( i saw the birth cert)

 

[pyrxtc]

well even though I picked a more unusual spelling, I actually feel I spelled it as it is pronounced. I have Alyson Laine, y says e in the middle of a word. I didn't like Al-i-son. We call her Aly. I have a Brenden Thai, not Brandon or Brendon no done at the end it is pronounced den. or Brendan with the dan sound. Thai is spelled correctly for the language it comes from. I also have Garren David Huy (pronounced huee, really fast). Everyone prounounces it correctly once they see it written down but always htink we introduce him as Darren, which I don't think is a more common name since I had never heard it before my neighbor moved in or on Bewitched. But at least I made it fair, not a single one can find anything pre-written on anything. also my last name is mispronounced every time too, does nobody remember that ph says Ffffff !! Pho = foe. I actually played wiht that a few years ago for our family t-shirts to Disney. Pho Phamily Phun.

 

[C.Ann]

Don't know how "unusual" it is, but my DstepD's DD named her daughter "Iliana".. I'd never heard that name prior to that - and at first it kind of threw me - but after awhile I found I really liked it..

The same DstepD named one of her DD's a combination of her dad's first name and hers - but I won't post it here because it's very, very unusual..

 

[palmtreegirl]

We wanted to name our son D'Artagnan but there was a great uprising in the family.

We went with James.

I wanted to name our son D'Artagnan but DH vetoed it.

 

[It'sWDW4me]

On the flip side - I hate my very common name. There were 4 other Mary's in my HS class of only 125!! Can't stand my middle name, Elizabeth, either. When I was younger I went through bouts of "I'm gonna change it as soon as I'm 18" but, meh, now I don't really care.

My mom's name is Elsie (L-C), not Elise!

In college, I roomed with a girl named Lorine (Lor-een), not Loraine!

One of my son's classmates (7th grade) is named Satchel and his younger brother is named Sage.

My son's younger, half-brother is named Dakota. When my ex called to tell my son that the baby was born I blurted out "Dakota? I thought you had a boy? Dakota's a girl's name!" Oops, did I say that out loud?

 

[Mouse House Mama]

I don't really care so much what people name their kids although occassionally I will wonder what on earth the parents were thinking. I jsut cannot stand when you see a name written like this BIHILLEEY and they tell you the name is Billy. Seriously? It is not unique. You are trying too hard and it just looks like you cannot spell. YMMV.

 

[Minnesota!]

I like unusual names, but don't care for common names with strange spellings. I don't see the point of it.

Ditto. Anndreeuh sounds the same as Andrea...just makes you look stupid!

I know two Josie's 3 years and under.

Josie was the name we had picked out for DS#2. I know quite a few of them under the age of 10. I still adore the name, and if we ever end up with a daughter, it will probably be her name..

And I agree that Koi is not a good name. I LOVE Remy and I LOVE Holland. Both are unique but sound great as girls names. Koi is just really bad.

 

[Denine]

My name is Denine. Now that is unusual! I hated it when I was a kid, try saying it with a cold! Now it is OK. I still get called everything else and of course no one knows how to spell it.

 

[Minnesota!]

I love off the beaten path names - Remy, Holland, River, Daisy, etc. for example. I hate trendy names - Aiden, Caden, Jaden, Jaylen, Madison, etc. And I adore the old fashioned names - Margaret, Jane, Helen, Louisa, Emmett, Elliott. etc.

Creative spellings are just the worst, though. I hate them.

I don't mind my name - Andrea. Pr. Ann-dree-uh. I have gotten a lot of "On-dree-uh" and "On-dray-uh" over the course of my 31 years. AAMOF, my dad's side all call me "On-dree-uh" and 1/2 of my mom's side calls me "On-dray-uh". Whatever.

I named my kids names that I hadn't heard on a child yet. But that were in the top 100. As long as I didn't know anyone with that name, I was good.

DS#1 = Lucas (I wanted Luke, but it didn't sound good with his middle name, so we went with Lucas. I call him Luke)
DS#2 - Noah. This one is really high up there on the charts. I have heard of a couple since he was born, but not crazy like. We will see when he starts school.